Ｄｒ．　Ｈｅｌｇａ　Ｗｅｒｌｅ－Ｂｕｒｇｅｒ

I paid my fourth visit to Hangzhou in the depth of the winter, 2008. The city now is in sharp contrast to the city I first visited in the spring of 1965. My initial impressions of the city include the poetic lake with willows and flowers and the temples and other places of historical interest which were open to tourists free of charge. At that time, most houses in the city were low structures of white walls and black tiles and there were rarely high-rises around the city.

What I saw this time in the winter of 2008 was astonishingly modern. On my way from the airport to the downtown, I saw rows of brand-new high-rises and fly-over crossings. It is a modernized city. In the West, such a large-scale urbanization would take 100 years or even 200 years to take place and complete. It occurred in Hangzhou in a few decades.

I revisited the lakeside scenic spots. The refurbished old downtown opened up some new spots. My husband and I spent a day around Hefangjie at the foot of the City God Hill. To my delight, the street, an area for pedestrians only, is now a shopping paradise where many old shops still operates their traditional business. Huqingyutang, a TCM pharmacy that is more than 100 years old, fascinated me. The pharmacy is a large compound. Situated in the front part of the large compound, the pharmacy has rows of cabinets where processed herbs are stored in separate drawers. On either side of the lobby are TCM clinic doctors providing clinic services. Patients can get prescriptions there and get TCM herbs. The pharmacy can prepare herbal preparations for patients. On the back part of the compound is a TCM museum where visitors can see the history of TCM and have hands-on experiences of traditional tools and devices that are used to process herbs.

TCM interests me for a reason. Since Chinas modernization drive 30 years ago, the medical authorities in Germany have shifted their attitude toward TCM from banning and objection to acceptance. Surveys show that about 60% of doctors in Germany have some knowledge of TCM. Many German doctors travel to China for the purpose of taking a closer look at TCM or having short-term TCM studies. Some doctors come to China on an annual basis for advanced studies with focus on acupuncture therapies and related TCM knowledge. TCM is now used as clinic treatment in Germany. Since the first TCM hospital was founded in Bavaria in Germany, there have been more than 20 TCM hospitals now in the country. Three universities in Germany have TCM research institutes. Some veterinarians in Germany have successfully applied acupuncture and massage therapies to animals.

During the visit to the Huqingyutang Pharmacy, I proudly talked with a Chinese TCM doctor about my adopted daughter, who is a brilliant young doctor in Germany. She was born as a twin and took great interest in life since childhood years. She chose to study gynecology and obstetrics as her college major. During her college days, she became aware of some shortcomings in western knowledge of gynecology and obstetrics. She focused her study on pregnant and postnatal women. After learning that postnatal women in China receive a 30-day health care, she had a new mission: she began to study the Chinese language and study the basics of TCM. She began to visit Chinese postnatal women in Germany and accumulated materials for her PhD thesis. She came to Hangzhou three times and worked in a hospital for gynecology and obstetrics in Hangzhou. While studying in Hangzhou, she learned a special method to use moxibustion on an acupuncture point on the little toe to correct the position of the unborn child in the womb. She taught the method at her midwife training courses back in Germany.

A Chinese woman gets a 30-day-long care after the baby is born. The mother remains in the bedroom for a month. During the month, she keeps herself away from wind and cold water so as to stay free of diseases that are easy to hit new mothers and are hard to cure. The diet for a postnatal woman in China is designed to restore the mothers physical fitness and enable the young mother to give the baby better nutrition through breastfeeding. In Germany, postnatal women are easily subject to some lifelong diseases such as rheumatism due to inattention to appropriate health care in the postnatal period. The Chinese tradition in this field can certainly help German women in keeping fit after they give birth to babies. □